After choosing to keep kids in school Wednesday, the Tangipahoa Parish school system gave parents a 30-minute notice that they would need to pick up their children at noon as severe weather moved through south Louisiana. 

The notice from Superintendent Melissa Stilley was sent out in a last-minute email and posted to social media around 11:30 a.m., just a half-hour before the adjusted dismissal time. The school system added that all campuses would be closed by 1 p.m.

The alert came as the storm system passed over the Baton Rouge area and made its way east into Livingston and Tangipahoa parishes. A Tornado Warning was issued for parts of Tangipahoa Parish before noon and remained in effect until around 1:30 p.m. 

Most parishes west of Tangipahoa announced school closures a day earlier, including neighboring Livingston Parish. Both Tangipahoa and St. Tammany parishes opted to stick to their normal school schedules going into Wednesday.

The Tangipahoa Superintendent's office sent out the following statement Wednesday evening, apologizing to parents for their decision: 

We are very sorry for any inconvenience that the early dismissal caused our families and employees; however, there were some unexpected shifts in this forecast with regard to timing.

When potential weather conditions are a concern, we coordinate with our local officials to determine school closures. This decision is based on weather predictions and the timing of the weather event. The 11 a.m. call today with local and state officials indicated that the greatest threat for hazardous weather would be between the hours of 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. During this time, conditions would not be favorable for buses to be on the road. As a result, we opted to begin dismissing students at noon up until 1 p.m. to get our bus routes completed well before 3:00 p.m. because some schools have buses that run two different routes.

Timing on these weather systems is always tricky. As conditions developed, we decided to hold students at school in some areas until it was safe to ride on the bus.

District and school communications were sent out through voice calls, emails, and text messages. Due to the large number of messages being sent within a short period of time, our communication system experienced delays in sending those messages out to stakeholders. We are already working with our communication system vendor to improve the efficiency of the release of information.

On a positive note, our transportation team activated their emergency plan and had bus drivers on site in 30 minutes. That’s never been done. They have a great system in place for emergency situations. The same goes for our cafeteria staff - amazing!

Any emergency situation offers us the opportunity to learn how to improve moving forward. We hope to never again have to implement emergency procedures in the middle of the day, however, we have new insight and are confident that we can be more proactive and efficient in these types of situations in the future.

We have confirmed that all of our students are home and buses are safely off the road. We would like to thank all our dedicated bus drivers, employees, and families for working together to get our children home safely.